Here We Go Again
by Mislagnissa
Summary: Madoka says goodbye to Homura, knowing that they'll never see each other again. Except... now Madoka's woken up in her own bed in a restored Mitakihara Town, her memories of the past month of horrors still fresh in her mind. Unfortunately for everyone involved, things just keep getting worse from there...


Homura tried to stand, but her body wouldn't respond. Her leg was caught underneath a large piece of debris. It was over, she realized. She'd exhausted herself, and Walpurgis was free to annihilate the city. The girl saw red falling into her vision; a gash on her forehead was leaking blood into her eyes. Tears began falling from the corners of her eyes, and all she could do was weakly whimper. Her soul gem began rapidly dimming, a dark shadow slowly, inexorably crawling over the violet light. In one or two minutes, her soul gem would explode with grief, and she'd die. Whatever was left over… she didn't want to think about that.

"Homura! Please be alright!"

Like an angel from Heaven Madoka ran to her side, kneeling on the ground and examining her injuries. The pinknette looked at her with concern. The violette's leg was crushed, and a puddle of red was slowly seeping from beneath her torso. She wasn't going to last much longer.

"I'm fine, Madoka," Homura lied, smiling weakly.

She could see Madoka blinking tears out of her eyes. It was time to try again, even if it would only make the consequences worse. She done this a dozen times already and she would do it a dozen times again and again. There was simply no other option for her. The violette's hand moved to her shield, but Madoka noticed.

"Please don't go! You're the only friend I have left!"

"I'm sorry," Homura replied.

After this, Madoka wouldn't remember she even knew Homura. The last thing the pinknette did was to engulf her last friend with their first and last embrace. Everything had come to naught, just like it had before.

_I just wish I could protect you, too._

Madoka's rosy eyes burst open and she immediately sat up. She glanced around warily, blinking sleep out of her eyes. She was in her room, in the early morning. Just like virtually every other morning where she'd woken up in her bedroom for the last few years. Madoka sat up and stared out the window. Sunlight streamed in. The trees outside were in bloom. The buildings in the distance were all in their proper place. It wasn't cold and overcast and there weren't buildings floating through the sky. Everything was perfectly normal.

WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

Alarm bells went off in Madoka's head. This wasn't possible. Everything could not suddenly have returned to normal after all that. Walpurgis destroyed the city! A thought suddenly occurred to her. Was that all a dream? It couldn't have been a dream. It was real! She remembered all of it! A sense of déjà vu washed over her. About a month before Walpurgisnacht, she'd woken up from a dream of the battle, an eerily prophetic dream. This was almost exactly like that, except she only remembered the last few moments of it that time. _This_ time, she remembered everything that had happened that month she knew Homura. Had she dreamed about the previous loop Homura had gone through? Kyubey had told her that Homura was a time traveler; that she'd traveled back in time many times for the purpose of saving her from becoming a magical girl.

A sense of dread crept over her. He had she traveled back in time herself somehow? Was any of what she was experiencing now even real? She pulled a teddy bear off the shelf. She hugged it. She put her nose to it and inhaled the familiar scent. It was… comforting, after all that. No, she decided. She knew what dreaming felt like. This was real. It was all real. Homura had really traveled back in time. Witches were real. Her friends had... Everyone had died. She hadn't been able to do anything to stop it.

The pinkette pushed off the covers, got out of bed, walked to her bedroom door, and opened it. Madoka went through her morning routine as usual, ignoring the oddly endearing sense of déjà vu. She walked down the stairs, stopping at the screen door leading to her father's garden. Her father was kneeling by the tomatoes, calm and without a care in the world.

"Hey, dad."

"Hey, Madoka," her father replied, glancing at her and smiling.

"Could you help—" She was already gone before he could finish. He shrugged, and then went back to examining tomatoes.

The door to her parent's room opened like it always did. Tatsuya was sitting on the bed, trying vainly to wake their mother. Madoka pulled open the window, and then pulled off the covers. Her mother, predictably, groaned and squirmed beneath the sudden intrusion. Madoka gave a half-hearted "rise and shine," went back to her room to dress, and then stepped into the shared bathroom. She didn't even bother to ask her mother to choose her hair ribbons.

"Madoka, are you alright? You seem a bit out of it."

Madoka turned to glance at her mother. Silence passed for a few seconds… Then the girl fell to her knees, breaking down in sobs.

* * *

"Hey Madoka!" Sayaka and Hitomi said happily as they walked into the pinkette's room.

"We heard you weren't feeling well, so we made you a copy of the notes and homework," explained Hitomi.

"You okay, Madoka?" asked Sayaka.

Madoka lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. Initially, she just continued to lay there and didn't acknowledge her two best friends at all. After a few moments, however, she slowly sat up, got off the bed and stepped over to Sayaka. The girl's blank pink eyes bored into her friend's confused blue ones.

"Madoka, you're kind of freaking me out here," said the bluenette.

Sayaka was alive. She wasn't a magical girl. She wasn't a witch. She wasn't _dead_. Her best friend for years was standing right in front her, back from the dead, as though nothing had changed. Was what she going to do? Sayaka was doomed. The moment Kyubey appeared, her fate was sealed. There was nothing Madoka could do to stop it… not unless she wanted to break Sayaka's heart. Without warning, Madoka wrapped her friend in a bear hug and began sobbing in earnest.

"Madoka! What's wrong?" asked Hitomi in concern.

Sayaka simply glanced at the small girl who clung to her chest as if her life depended on it. She tentatively lifted a hand and patted Madoka on the back. Madoka's sudden change in behavior was off-putting at best.

"It's okay. I'm here now. You can let go of me," she said.

Madoka let out a few more sobs, before she released Sayaka and stepped back to look the bluenette in the eye. That cinched it. Sayaka wasn't making a contract ever again. If she was sad about violin-boy, well fuck him then. There were plenty of other fish in the sea. Besides, high school romances never lasted. Only foolishly idealistic children believed otherwise.

"I thought you were dead," the pinkette began, tears falling down her face. "Please don't leave me, Sayaka! I don't want to go through that again!"

"Whoa, whoa! I'm right here. I'm fine. What's up with you? Why would you ever think I'm dead?"

Madoka began glancing around, her eyes wide with fear. She'd just realized that she'd forgotten one very, very important detail.

"He isn't here, is he? He could be anywhere, watching us," she said.

"Madoka, you are officially scaring us. Who are you talking about? Is someone stalking you?" asked Hitomi, her voice heavy with concern.

Madoka glanced at the greenette.

"Kyubey," she replied cryptically.

"Kyubey?" Sayaka and Hitomi both asked in confusion.

"He looks like a stuffed animal… but he's not. He's a monster. He—"

All of a sudden, the walls began melting away only to be replaced by crayon drawings as a ghoulish tittering began to fill the air. Sayaka and Hitomi glanced around in confusion. This was not even remotely normal. Rooms don't just vanish for no apparent reason. They certainly aren't replaced with something out a creepy stop-motion animation.

"What the—? Where did the room go?" asked Hitomi fearfully.

"No, no, no, no! Not now! Not here!" Madoka fell to her knees and began sobbing again. The pinkette's protests were quickly drowned out by her wails. How could she have been so stupid? Her pain, her sorrow… it only served to attract them right to her. The witches were coming…

Sayaka and Hitomi stared up in fear as something traveled across one of the walls toward them. It looked like an animated crayon drawing of a pig-tailed girl riding in a miniature airplane. It giggled as it closed in on them. Before it reached them, however, a number of shapes resembling cotton balls appeared and began swarming around it. The two girls quickly turned and ran to their sobbing friend, pulled her to her feet and supported her between them, and ran off in the opposite direction from the distracted cotton balls as fast as they could. The ghoulish tittering continued to follow them. After running what they assumed was a couple hundred meters, which was difficult to judge with the environment resembling an acid trip, they stopped. A dark-haired girl wearing an odd outfit with purple trim stood in front of them. She held out one hand.

"Come with me if you want to live," she said. Her tone left no room for argument.

Though she didn't show it, Homura was quaking in her dark violet high-heeled boots. This was completely unprecedented. Though the loops were not identical, they were generally consistent in the overall outcome of the events and their ordering. Now, all of a sudden, every witch and their familiars in Mitakihara Town were now converging on the Kaname residence. There was only one possible explanation: Madoka.

"Who are you?" asked Sayaka.

"What's going on?" asked Hitomi.

The two girls in front of her, an openly weeping Madoka held between them, had the gall to look their gift horse in the mouth. Didn't they realize their lives were in danger?

"There's no time," replied Homura. "Dozens of those creatures are converging on this location. We need to get out of here, now."

"What about Mister Kaname and Tatsuya?" asked Hitomi in worry.

Homura's eyes widened. How could she have forgotten? She'd have to backtrack into the house. She couldn't just let innocent people get killed, especially not Madoka's family. Every loop counted and, though she denied it, each got worse than the last.

"We'll bring them with us on the way out. Take my hand, now!" cried Homura.

Sayaka glanced at the outstretched hand, distrustful even in these trying circumstances. Hitomi, however, quickly grabbed it. In an instant, the world around them became frozen and grey. Impossible as it seemed, time itself stood still in complete violation of the laws of physics. If they weren't running for their lives, the girls might've found it a lovely sight-seeing tour.

"Huh?"

"Hold on tight, and whatever you do, do not let go," explained Homura and she pulled them along.

The gateway to the labyrinth appeared in front of them, the strange multicolored emblem floating in mid-air. It wouldn't remain stable for long, with dozens of familiars battling on behalf of their witches for control. Experienced magical girls sometimes joked that the best way to destroy a witch was to get two of them in the same place and watch nature take its course. In this case, that was the worst case scenario. Homura pulled the three girls through the portal, and they suddenly found themselves back in Madoka's room.

"Hurry!"

The girls ran out of the room and struggled to walk down the stairs, which weren't designed to admit four people at once. Tomohisa Kaname and his four-year-old son were in the kitchen, frozen like the rest of the world and ignorant of their impending doom.

"They're frozen," exclaimed Sayaka.

A second later, the world unfroze. Tomohisa immediately noticed them and stared in confusion. Four girls, including Madoka, her friends and a girl he'd never seen before, had just appeared in his kitchen out of thin air, as though by magic… which, incidentally, was exactly what it was.

"Huh? Madoka? How did you—"

"Kaname, our lives are in danger," Homura quickly explained. "Grab Tatsuya and come with me, now."

"But I—"

"Hurry!"

Tomohisa put down the carving knife and ran over to his son's high chair and pulled the boy out. He turned around and looked at Homura in confusion, awaiting further instructions. Something had gone seriously wrong if he was listening to a fourteen-year-old girl in a crisis situation.

"Sayaka, grab his hand! Hurry!"

Sayaka obeyed, adrenalin surging through her veins. Then the world froze again, much to the shock of Tomohisa. Sayaka and Hitomi took it in stride, this being the second time they'd seen it and their brains addled with adrelin.

"What's going on? Madoka, are you alright?" asked Tomohisa in shock and confusion.

"No time! Follow me and don't let go even for a moment!"

Homura ran, and took with her a sobbing wreck plus two girls, a little boy, and a grown man the latter four of whom had no idea what mess they had fallen into. Had they understood what was going on, they probably would've reacted like Madoka did. Fortunately, they did not… yet.


End file.
